


Snakeskin

by envysnest



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII Remake (Video Game 2020)
Genre: Bittersweet Ending, Canon-Compliant (if you squint), Everyone is Queer, F/M, First Time, Frank Discussions of Past Rape/Abuse, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pre-Crisis-Core Seph, Reader is a Cis Woman, Reader-Insert, Slow Burn, i continue to disappoint my friends and family, sephiroth is a virgin and in this essay i will
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-27
Updated: 2021-01-23
Packaged: 2021-03-10 19:41:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 16,539
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28352616
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/envysnest/pseuds/envysnest
Summary: You are a young biologist, fresh out of graduate school, working in Shinra's R&D Division under Professor Hojo. You had long since given up on finding a partner and starting a family, preferring instead the company of your cell samples and your scientific instruments.As the conflict in Wutai worsens, you strike up an unexpected friendship with a First Class SOLDIER.(Sephiroth/Reader Slow Burn)
Relationships: Sephiroth (Compilation of FFVII)/Reader
Comments: 115
Kudos: 185





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I swear to God if you know me IRL don't read this, it's embarrassing.
> 
> This will be a multi-chapter Seph/Reader that takes place just before Crisis Core. I hope to update weekly. It's very much a soft H/C kind of deal since I don't see a lot of self-inserts with a reader struggling with PTSD; I hope this brings some light to my fellow assault survivors. 
> 
> Trigger warnings will be used prior to chapters discussing past rape. No one is assaulted in the timeline of this fic.
> 
> Because this is as canon-compliant as possible and ends with the Nibelheim incident, I marked it "bittersweet ending" just in case, but heads-up: it's soft and happy as FUCK up until that point (and possibly beyond that point). I wrote this to indulge my inner cringy 13 year old.
> 
> Enjoy.

November was rough and cold. The steam heater in your Sector 8 apartment had broken roughly twenty years ago, and it groaned and hissed uselessly in the background. Luckily, the electricity was still working: the benefit of being so close to a reactor. You squinted against your desk lamp. The news burbled on the TV: something about Wutai again.

You clipped off the wire with a _snip._ There was something deeply satisfying about using salvaged scrap for jewelry. It felt as if you were giving old, worthless things new beauty, new meaning.

A tiny copper butterfly dangled off of the edge of the bracelet. It twinkled in the light of your desk lamp.

As you leaned back to admire your work, you couldn’t help but feel pride at how it came alive under your hands. The _right_ hands.

Someone had thought this was garbage, once. You knew better.

* * *

As you filled your lab notebook, dutifully pasting tables and charts on the lined pages, a younger research assistant tapped your shoulder. When you looked up at her, she beamed and whispered your name with excitement.

“They’re coming back,” she said. “The SOLDIERs. Wanna see them?"

You blinked and looked down at your notebook, surrounded by scraps of data. “I mean…I really need to finish this.”

The assistant groaned and rolled her eyes. “ _Please._ You work enough as it is. Come _on._ ”

As if on cue, a cheer erupted from outside of the lab.

You pushed your stool away from the lab bench. “Hojo will _kill_ us.” With practiced hands, you removed your gloves: first one, then, with a thumb hooked under the wrist, the other. They went straight into the biohazard bin: an unnecessary waste, you surmised, but Shinra had the money to burn for endless gloves. You weren't in grad school anymore.

The assistant didn’t even wait for you as she joined the masses of scientists, assistants, and technicians running to the glass windows overlooking the rest of the floor. You got up and shuffled to the back of the crowd, where you had to stand on tip-toes to get a look at who was returning.

Muffled whispers of excitement erupted when the Third Classes came up the escalators. Upon seeing the gaggle of scientists pressed against the glass, they lifted their hands up in a celebratory wave. Several of your coworkers clapped.

Then the Second Classes: proud in their dark blue uniforms, staring dutifully forward. A few of the scientists broke off from the crowd and left the labs to greet them. The Second Classes, with less bravado than their Third-Class peers, waved shyly back at the burgeoning crowd.

“First Classes next,” someone hissed. Another chunk of employees broke off from the crowd. There was a tense silence.

A cheer bubbled up from the crowd when the First Classes came up the escalator.

There were fewer SOLDIERs this time, but they walked as individuals, rather than as a crowd. The first man looked more like the Second Classes: turtleneck, leather suspenders, sword slung over one shoulder. His hair was dark and swept back. He kept his head down as employees crowded around him, but there was no mistaking the smile on his face.

The second SOLDIER had far more bravado: a red duster, fluffy red hair cut into a bob, a feminine face that reminded you of a sated cat. He held out his arms to welcome the crowd, laughing and grinning as people tugged on his coat. When he kissed a female employee’s hand, the crowd roared its approval.

He hadn’t even left your line of sight before the crowd shifted and _pushed,_ and before you knew it, you were left standing alone as everyone poured out the doors to greet the last SOLDIER. You craned your neck to see above everyone’s heads.

“Sephiroth!” someone shouted, and the crowd surged forward.

You had been working for Shinra for less than a year, but even _you_ knew that name.

Sephiroth stood a full head above the crowd. He looked withdrawn, off-put by the excited mob that greeted him as he walked off the escalator. Unlike with his colleague, no one reached out to touch him; everyone backed away to allow him to move through the awestruck crowd. He walked with his shoulders back and his head high: a god among mortals, an Other.

You fiddled with the butterfly charm and watched him. Almost everyone had their phones out; someone leaned in for a selfie, and you could see Sephiroth heave a sigh before he gamely bent down into frame. He didn’t bother smiling, but no one seemed to care.

As he straightened, he glanced towards the lab and made eye contact with you.

Even from this distance, his eyes were bright with mako. You straightened up, holding your arms to your chest as if to protect yourself.

There was a deep, weary disappointment on his face.

He lowered his eyes and turned away.

* * *

The steam heater wasn’t any better when you returned that night. You put on every blanket you had and sat down at your desk. There was still a mass of steel on your desk that you hadn’t gotten around to working with: a sheet likely dropped from the Plate itself. You shook out the storage box, and the steel tumbled out onto your bench. A charm today, you thought, like the butterfly. You swiveled in your chair to turn the TV on, settled on some mindless soap opera.

This would be small: a keepsake, something to treasure and hold close. As you worked, you thought on the flowers in Sector Five, the fat honeybees lazily drifting from bloom to bloom, the hot sun (so far away now, in this winter cocoon that had closed around Midgar like a fist). You felt like time stopped then, surrounded by the plants and delicate machinations of life: things with purpose, and yet no purpose at all. It was at times like this that you could close your eyes and feel the Lifestream: tiny little strings, plucked in harmony, each letting out a deep, sonorous note. _Symphony._

Yes, that was it. A honeybee: a life-giving thing.

You sat back and turned the metal honeybee back and forth in your hands. If you pulled a tiny chain behind the abdomen, the wings would raise up in silent salute: reaching up, up, towards the sky, towards the sun. You had made its stripes out of old copper scraps from the butterfly.

Up on the Plate, you were so far away from the earth, the flowers, the warm and living things. The most lively thing you had in your life were your cell samples.

The process to harvest cell material went as such: you put them in a tube, put that tube in an ice bucket, and ran an electric probe through the tube. One flick of a switch, and the cells burst open, releasing their contents into their surroundings.

You were suddenly overcome by the urge to crush the honeybee in your hands.

You slipped it under your pillow instead. On TV, a character wept over her lost love.

* * *

This was a DNA isolation day: endless tubes, priceless samples evaporated into drops of water, filters no bigger than your pinky nail. Given salt, alcohol, freezing conditions, and time, DNA would settle lazily at the bottom of a tube. If you held it up to the light, you could see it there: a small, dusty fragment of life, so transient and thin that you had to press the tip of the tube against your thumb to even see it. Liquid gold, suspended in water.

Technically, this was research-assistant work, but you were stubborn and didn’t like the less experienced employees handling your samples. This particular one was a negative control sample: DNA extracted from a Third Class just entering the program. Nothing special about him, not yet. Today you were going to work on more controls donated by the Turks.

A bustle of activity came from the lab windows. You ignored it as you pipetted alcohol into the waiting tube. Tour groups and foreign investors came by all the time, anxious to see cutting-edge work. There was nothing particularly secret or interesting here: all of your samples were under code names, and some of the equipment was so old and fussy that you had to beat your palm against the side to get it to work. Assistants and fellow professors scurried around in their lab coats and safety glasses. You supposed someone who had never been in a lab would find your work exciting, but to you, it had become numb and routine.

You set your tube down in its container and ejected the pipette tip. You turned to grab your salt solution when you caught sight of a dark shape by the windows. Someone giggled. You looked up.

Sephiroth was there, listening intently to Professor Hollander as he gestured towards the labs. You set your pipette down and turned in your chair. He looked oddly demure, out-of-place, looming over the smaller man with a polite expression and his hands behind his back.

“Hollander shouldn’t be here,” you said to yourself.

Sephiroth looked up at the lab as if he had heard you. You locked eyes through the glass.

A lump rose in your throat. Hollander kept talking, oblivious.

Sephiroth tilted his head down in acknowledgement, a small, secret smile playing on the edges of his lips as he stared back at you.

You blinked and held your breath.

By the time Sephiroth looked back to Hollander and responded, your mouth had long gone dry.

* * *

The second time you ran into each other was on the way to different conference rooms. You were rushing to the crowded 60th floor elevator, a fresh mug of coffee in one hand and your notebook in the other.

“Wait,” you gasped, “wait—“

But it was too late, someone pressed a button, and the door slid closed with a dozen impassive stares watching you screech to a halt.

You steadied the coffee cup. A drop splashed onto your dress shoes. “God damn it.” If you were late to this meeting, you’d get flayed alive.

“Looks like we’re stuck waiting for the next one.”

The voice was smooth. You turned and nearly jumped out of your skin. Sephiroth, a tablet in one hand, was peering in annoyance at the closed doors, as if he were a normal employee.

He looked towards you and gestured to the doors. “Isn’t it terrible? Everyone’s in a hurry these days.”

You shrunk back. Up close, he was so much _larger_ than you. You barely came up to his sternum.

You turned back to your shoes. “Yes,” you said quietly. “Guess so.”

He nodded at you. “Guess so,” he repeated, tone plaintive.

An awkward silence descended on the two of you. The coffee was burning your hand. You shifted your weight from foot to foot. Somewhere below you, the elevator dinged.

He spoke up. “Have we met?”

You looked up at him again. He was studying your face intently, eyes narrowed: not with disgust or malice, but with curiosity, as if he was trying to place you. You thought, briefly, that confusion looked strange on him. He never seemed to be confused about anything.

_Too much,_ you thought. _It’s too much._

“We’ve seen each other around,” you said. “I’m in Hojo’s lab? The…” You turned and pointed your elbow at the glass windows.

“The one with the windows.”

“Yeah.”

“Ah.”

The elevator door dinged. He straightened and turned towards the elevator, but he hadn’t taken a step forward before he was turning back to you. “Do you need a hand?”

“Huh? Oh.” You lifted your arms to show off the notebook, the coffee mug. “No, no, it’s…I prefer holding stuff like this. It’s okay.”

“At least let me hold the door for you.” Before you could say anything, he pressed a hand against the elevator doors to prevent them from closing. When he turned to you and waited, you realized he wanted you to go ahead of him.

“Thanks,” you mumbled. You felt your face heating up as you scurried past him, head down. You swore you could feel his body heat, so close to him. He followed after you and stood by your left side.

“What floor?” he asked, and you suddenly felt lazy for not taking the stairs.

“64,” you said to your shoes. Climbing such a distance would’ve been cake to him.

He pressed a few buttons. The doors slid closed.

Another awkward silence descended on the two of you. You wanted so badly to melt into the floor.

“Pretty,” he said softly, almost to himself.

You started and looked up, but he wasn’t looking at you. His head was tilted to one side, eyes narrowed again: studying, you realized, your bracelet.

“What?” you said.

He pointed to the butterfly charm. “It’s pretty,” he said. “Where did you get that? Underplate?”

You jerked your arm away. You wanted him to stop looking at you. “I made it.”

He looked up at your face. That small, secret smile was playing on the corner of his lips again. If he noticed your discomfort, he didn’t indicate it to you. “Well done.”

“I—“ You stared at him. “Thanks. Thank you.”

The tiny smile grew. The elevator chimed, and the doors slid open. You looked up: this was your floor.

“My floor,” you said dumbly.

Sephiroth nodded. “Seems so.”

You rushed out. As you were turning back to the elevator door, you saw him raise a hand in parting. Before you could raise one in return, the doors closed, and he was gone.

It wasn’t until you made it to the conference room that you realized: he had pressed against the walls as you left so you wouldn’t have to squeeze past him again.

* * *

There was a huge, gray wall on the way back from your apartment. Usually, it contained advertisements for various things: a larger-than-life poster for the 500th screen adaptation of _Loveless,_ the newest flavor of Potion, Stamp on his hind legs. You liked to glance at it on the way home from work, guess at whatever the workers were putting up next. It had been bare for a few weeks, but a few workers were smoothing out the newest poster. You stopped on the edge of the sidewalk and looked up.

Shinra had purchased the ad space for themselves. Three First-classes loomed over you, looking off into the distance, heroic in their blandness. Behind them, in the distance, you could see rows upon rows of Shinra guards, all identical.

_Always looking out for you and your family,_ said the ad.

You recognized the First Classes on the poster: there was the dark-haired man, one hand on his sword.His arms were crossed. The SOLDIER beside him had red hair and a long red coat. His hands were on his hips.

And in the center loomed Sephiroth, twenty feet taller than you, long hair flowing behind him. He clutched his sword in his left hand.

Something about the poster bothered you. You squinted up at it, feeling uneasy.

You took a step forward—

Someone shouldered you aside. “Watch it!”

You ducked your head. It was just a poster; why did it matter?

You scurried back to your apartment. High above you, it had begun to snow.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm really delighted and heartened by the response this lil project is getting; thank you so, so much. :')
> 
> I've added a tag for readers just jumping on now, but **the reader is a cis woman with she/her pronouns.** Please shout if you'd like a gender-neutral version of this story, and I can make a separate version for you guys!
> 
> Liberal amounts of pseudoscience in this chapter, shhh just pretend
> 
> **TW's for this chapter: mild medical gore (blood draws, brief description of samples), rape (flashbacks in section 6).**

Shinra had a dozen phlebotomists on call. On days when you needed fresh cell samples, you called one in advance to draw blood from a specimen of your choosing, and you would promptly deposit the fresh samples into a bucket of ice for preservation. Today was specimen 001’s day.

The phlebotomist you called was younger than you, a tiny, fluttering girl named Sully. She reminded you so much of how you looked when you left undergrad: hopeful, excited to do science that would change the world. After years of setback and failure in your own research, as well as a grueling stint in a doctoral program, you now felt as if you were going through the motions. An odd mix of jealousy and excitement welled up in you whenever you saw Sully: jealousy, yes, that you had tamped down that own fluttering joy deep in you like pinning a butterfly to the wall. But deeper than that, there was a small sort of excitement, a hope that you could feel that happy again.

You squinted at Sully under the bright fluorescent lights of the clinic. Sully flipped a page on her clipboard. “001’s not a talker,” she said, “but he usually likes company.” She looked up at you, flashed a toothy smile. “Are you sure you don’t want to watch? He’s got _really_ nice veins.”

Nausea welled up in your belly. You _hated_ needles. Your grip on the ice bucket tightened. “ _Hell_ no,” you said. “I always get woozy, Sully. You know that.”

“I swear, you’re such a baby sometimes.” She rooted around in her pocket for the exam room keys. “Wait here.”

You sat on the cold bench outside the exam room. Someone, a long time ago, had placed upholstery on this bench as a cosmic joke: every time you sank down onto it, you were startled by the hard, cold leather. You shifted your ice bucket around on your knees.

A pair of dark boots came into your peripheral. You didn’t look up until their owner said, “Well, well.”

You looked up and nearly choked when you saw Sephiroth staring at you.

“We keep running into each other, don’t we?” he said.

You clutched the ice bucket tighter, as if it would provide a barrier between you two. “Yeah,” you squeaked, “I guess we do.”

“Huh.” He crossed his arms. _Is that a defensive gesture?_ No, he was smiling again-- he seemed pleased. “I must be very lucky.”

Before you could reply, the door to the clinic flew open. Sully poked her head out. “001,” she chirped. “You’re up.”

Something in Sephiroth’s expression hardened. You hadn’t even realized he was being friendly towards you. _Was that friendly?_ you thought. “Always a pleasure, Sully.”

Sully gestured towards you and said your name. “One of Hojo's lab rats. Are you gettin’ friendly, 001?”

Sephiroth stuck out a hand to shake. “We’ve already met.”

You held up one nitrile-gloved hand. “I can’t shake,” you said feebly. “It’ll contaminate the gloves. And you.” Much, much softer: “Sorry.”

“Ah.” He withdrew his hand. The corners of his mouth twitched up. “Maybe another time, then.”

Sully tilted her head and beamed at you. “Last chance to watch, _Professor._ ”

You shook your head. Sully giggled at the tension in your face.

“Yes, _Professor_.” Ah, now Sephiroth was calling you that, too. “I could use a buddy.”

You felt your cheeks grow hot. “Sure,” you said to the ice bucket.

Sully pumped her fist in victory. “Let’s go, then.”

You stood stiffly next to the drawing chair as Sully fussed over Sephiroth. As she rolled up his sleeve, a pale expanse of skin greeted you. Blue and green veins traveled up, up, up, from his wrist to the soft inner joint of his elbow, like he was made of the lifestream itself. You looked away.

True to her word, he didn’t say anything as she tied a tourniquet and tapped on his skin. He watched her, passive and bored in a pleasant sort of way, as if he had done this a thousand times before. Specimen 001 had been no stranger to your lab bench. Little parts of him, every pound of flesh and fluid imaginable: on ice, at room temp., cryogenically-stored, on a petri dish, in liquid and solid media. Slices of organ tissue, strands of thin silver hair, tiny baby teeth mottled with oxidized blood. Once: a pair of swollen tonsils in a jar of formaldehyde. If you turned out the lights, they had a faint green glow to them.

As Sully picked up her butterfly needle, you kept your head turned away, studying the anatomical chart on the wall like you were paid to memorize it. Sephiroth didn’t say anything when the needle went in. The robot assigned to collect samples beeped.

Sully removed her gloves. “You wanna get comfortable, Professor? It’s gonna be a while.”

You realized that if you kept clutching the ice bucket like a teddy bear, its contents would melt. Still staring at the anatomical poster, you slowly set your bucket down on the opposite counter.

Sully scoffed. She turned to Sephiroth and stage-whispered, “She’s afraid of needles.”

You hissed, “ _Sully!”_ at the poster.

Sephiroth’s voice was smooth. “We all have our weaknesses.” Something in his voice softened, and you heard him shift in the chair. “Sit with me, Professor.”

You sank into the chair beside him. The slices of muscle and bone in the anatomical poster seemed to taunt you. Even with some distance between you, he was warm.

Sully grabbed her clipboard. “I’ll be back. Holler if you need anything.”

You rose out of your chair. "Sully, wait--"

Before you could say otherwise, Sully had flounced out of the room, leaving the two of you alone. You sunk back into your seat and made a mental note to switch her coffee with decaf.

Something nudged your foot. When you looked down, the toe of Sephiroth’s boot was near yours.

“You’re afraid,” he said. “You don’t want to look?”

“I really, _really_ don’t like needles.”

Neither of you moved. The machine beeped again.

“Here, try this. Look up at my face.”

“Please,” you said.

“Just try.”

When you did, your breath caught. You were much closer to each other than you had ever been. You could see the green glow of his eyes, the fine spattering of pale freckles across his nose, the fall of his hair.

And his _pupils._

They weren’t human.

A chill raced up your spine. His pupils expanded, ever-so-slightly, while he looked at you. You willed yourself not to be rude, to do as you were told, but something in your gut rebelled: the primal instinct to run away. He tilted his head, expression gentle and curious, and the pupils became thin, needle-like again against the fluorescent light of the clinic room.

The movement of his head caused you to look away, down towards his arm. Before you could see the needle, a hand blocked your view.

“Don’t look at the needle, look at me,” he said. “Keep your eyes on my face.”

The machine beeped again. Behind Sephiroth, you could see thin tubes filled with blood drawing from him, up, up, up, into the sample tubes you’d take with you. You made a face and turned your attention back to his face, towards those _eyes_. “It’s hard _not_ to look.” You could hear the machine churning away.

“I know. Let’s talk about something else.” He gestured towards the butterfly bracelet. “Have you always made your own jewelry?”

You tried to look down towards it, but your eyes caught on the needle in his arm. You squeezed your eyes shut, woozy. "Mm."

“I told you,” Sephiroth said, “Eyes up here.” When you looked up at him again, you found yourself focusing on his eyes again. He blinked once, twice. Had his lashes always been that long? “Better?”

The wooziness faded away. You leaned away from him. “How’d you do that?”

An amused smile spread across his face. Up close, you could see the bridge of his nose crinkle the tiniest bit: a flash of humanity. “I asked you about your—“

“Oh.” You sat up in your chair and willed yourself to keep your eyes on his. Your gut began to settle, but your heart was racing for other reasons, reasons you didn't dare put a name to. “I’ve, uh. I’ve always liked making jewelry. It keeps my hands busy when I watch TV.”

“Do you use other materials?”

“Just scrap metal,” you said. You instinctively touched the bracelet. “It’s going to sound stupid.”

Sephiroth huffed out a laugh. The machine beeped again. You resisted the urge to check on it. “Surprise me,” he said.

“It’s all…unwanted stuff.” You twisted your wrist. The bracelet sung on your arm; the butterfly clinked against the wire. “It’s the trash people throw out.”

“Mm?” Sephiroth leaned back in the chair and nodded at you. He didn’t seem at all affected from losing blood. A flush crept up your neck.

“I feel like…” The machine beeped. You sat up in your chair. “People throw away a massive amount of useful things.” Briefly, you thought about all the times Sephiroth had been on your bench, all of the blood and hair and organ matter. Dying cells, failed experiments, gone into the biohazard bin without a second thought. You took a deep breath. “It’s causing a lot of waste, so I like to, you know. Give it a home?”

“Very eco-friendly of you.” He didn’t sound sarcastic.

You began to smile. His eyes darted down to your lips, so briefly that you told yourself you must have imagined it. He scrunched his nose again as he smiled back at you. Something about the action, however brief it was, was so childlike, so _vulnerable_ , that you couldn’t believe it would ever cross such a dignified face. You wrung your hands in your lap.

“What do you do?" you asked. "Like, when you come home.”

“Come home from what?”

“From missions. Work.”

He looked away. “You’re asking about _my_ hobbies.”

You smiled again, resisted the urge to look down at the needle in his arm. You focused instead on his face, now in profile. “Sure. We’re having a conversation, right?”

He closed his eyes and laughed. “Fair.” He looked back up at you, but something in it had become closed off: hidden away, protected against you. “I don’t really do anything in my free time, what little there is.”

You sat back in your chair. “That’s…”

“Sad, I know.”

“I didn’t mean—“

The door to the clinic opened again. Both of you looked up at Sully as she re-entered the room with a flounce.

She beamed at you. “Making friends?”

Sephiroth shifted in his chair. “You choose your assistants well, Sully,” he said, and his voice was even and polite.

He used a different tone with you. You filed that away for later.

Sully barked out a laugh as she disconnected the instrument from the IV. “Please! She’s not my assistant. I think she’d kill me if I called her that.”

You obediently looked back to the poster as Sully slid the needle out. All told, there were eleven vials of blood, and Sephiroth hadn’t even flinched. Once he was bandaged, he stood up and stretched. You scurried past him to fetch the tubes of blood. The samples were still warm from his body; you laid them gently atop the ice bucket's surface. Soon, you would be pulling them apart: separating components and cells and plasma, testing analyte concentrations, comparing their contents to documented meal plans. Perhaps you'd culture them and grow new things: you liked that idea, but Hojo always got the final say.

Sully elbowed you gently as she pushed past you. “Come back anytime, Professor,” she said, voice sweet, and then she was gone again, rushing off to collect samples from other examination rooms.

You hesitated in the doorway.

“It’s not sad,” you said to the empty hall.

“What’s not sad?”

You turned around. Sephiroth was adjusting his coat, his gaze fixed on you.

Your voice shook when you spoke again. “It’s not sad that you don’t do anything,” you said. “It’s okay. You must be tired when you come home.”

Sephiroth hesitated. You could almost see the gears turning in his head as he looked down at the floor, ruminating over what you had said. You held the ice bucket to your chest. His blood rocked gently back and forth inside of the heparin tubes.

After a weighted moment, he said, “Huh.”

You turned away and strode back towards the elevators. You could feel his eyes on you all the way until the elevator doors closed.

* * *

You couldn’t sleep. In the dark and cold of your apartment, you toyed with the honeybee under your pillow. The night prior, you had sanded down all of its rough edges to make it smooth, preventing you from cutting your hands.

You couldn’t understand why, but something about Sephiroth coming home to empty barracks and doing nothing made you sad. All the celebrations, the praise, the glory— only to come home to silence.

To an empty bed.

Just like you.

You pulled the bee out from under your pillow and held it up to the window. As you turned it back and forth, the metal caught the streetlights and glittered.

Didn’t he have anyone waiting for him?

_You know he does,_ whispered a small voice in your head.

Your face crumpled. You put the honeybee on your night table and turned away from it.

* * *

Working under Hojo made you want to kill yourself at best. You avoided him as much as possible, diligently performing your research and only conversing via e-mail unless absolutely necessary. Luckily, the man seemed perpetually online, and you never went more than an hour before getting a response from him.

When you got into work the next morning, Hojo was waiting at your cubicle. He always looked as if he had just smelled sour milk, eyes unreadable behind his dark glasses.

He didn't bother greeting you. “We’re going to have visitors today." He shoved his hands in his pockets. “I trust you’ll look presentable?”

As if you could go home and doll yourself up beyond business casual. You retrieved your ID card from your pocket. He didn’t bother moving, and you were forced to slide past him, into your cubicle. You set your bag and coffee down on your desk and picked up your lab coat from its hook.

“As always, Professor,” you mumbled as you pulled it on. The ID card went into the coat pocket.

“Very good, Doctor.” He insisted on _doctor_ with you, not _professor._ “Professor” was _his_ title. “Your progress has been rather exciting.” When you turned back to him, he adjusted his glasses and gave you a crooked grin. “Perhaps I’ll trot you out to impress them.”

You gave him a tight smile and leaned on the wall of your cubicle, waiting for him to leave. He didn’t budge.

You nodded. “I would be honored.”

Satisfied, Hojo finally stepped aside and let you pass.

You could barely suppress the shiver that ran up your spine when you turned the corner, out of sight. Hojo brought up dark feelings in you: memories of past workplaces, of wandering hands and whispered threats, of feeling small and caged and alone. He tended to bleed through female scientists like no other department at Shinra, and you think you knew why. You felt like a cherished pet canary, not a researcher in your own right. It didn’t matter if you refused to sing; Hojo would _make_ you sing.

_It’s only a matter of time,_ said the voice in your head. _The bill always comes due._

You stopped outside of the glass walls of the lab. You clenched your fists tight, then released them with a sigh.

A gaggle of SOLDIERs and employees spilled out of the nearby elevator as you fished around in your lab coat for your ID card. If there were visitors today, surely they were investors or higher-ups: fancy people that you didn’t get to see unless you were being stared at like an animal in a zoo.

Two other, larger SOLDIERs headed the back of the pack: First Classes, you realized, the same ones from the poster. You had done some digging and learned their names: Genesis and Angeal.

They were talking animatedly between each other, voices still too low for you to hear across the lobby. Genesis threw back his head and laughed. Angeal nudged him.

A few steps away from them, watching them closely like a mother hen, was Sephiroth. You felt your heart flutter in your chest as you watched him.

He looked up at you and stopped in his tracks. Genesis and Angeal kept walking.

You raised a hand in silent greeting, wiggled your fingers with a nervous smile.

Sephiroth nodded slowly in return.

And then, even this far away, you could see that smile spread across his face: the warm and secret one he only seemed to show you. You nodded back.

He turned away and followed his friends to the escalators.

* * *

017, your negative control, had a stupidly high level of cortisol.

You peered at the instrument’s screen, then turned to your new RA: Marcie, you thought, or was it Mercy? The girl was trembling head to toe: it was her first day on the job, and Hojo had already screamed at her for not wearing close-toed shoes in the lab.

“It’s alright," you said. "We’ve got plenty of tubes of 017 left over. Do a few more runs for me.”

Mercy-Marcie gave a quick bow. “I’ll do better, Professor. I-I promise.”

“Please don’t apologize.” You tugged on your gloves and looked at the instrument screen again. Blood sugar, normal. No mako traces in blood, as expected. But whoever 017 was, he was stressed half-to-death. You knew he was one of the Shinra guards, not a SOLDIER: what had he seen that had scared him so badly? “This is science. Who knows?”

You turned back to the girl and gave her a soft smile. You saw so much of yourself in her: the wide eyes, the relentless optimism, how she had overdressed for the first day on the job. She had even matched her hijab to her necklace: a rose gold, so gentleagainst the harsh green glow of the lab. You snuck a quick glance at her name tag: Marcie, after all. “Maybe we’re on to something cool.”

Marcie perked up. “You think so?”

You gestured helplessly at the instrument. “Or, you know. We have lab ghosts now.”

Marcie giggled. You swept past her, still smiling. You'd have to be extra nice to her to make up for Hojo being...Hojo.

The double doors to the lab opened, and everyone turned. Lazard led a team of suits into the lab. Hojo scurried along behind them, scowling. Everyone seemed to stand up straighter, turning back to their work with a studious fervor.

Lazard stopped in the center of the lab and swept a wide arm. “Our most prized branch of the SOLDIER division. Here, we keep tabs on the biology of our warriors, documenting their needs and studying their performance in battle.”

The suits tittered excitedly. Hojo darted in front of Lazard and grinned.

“Please, sir,” he simpered, “if you’ll allow me.”

The crowd slowly began moving towards you, pausing every so often to _ooh and ahh_ at different instruments. Research assistants and scientists alike scattered, heads down, trying to look busy so as not to capture undue attention.

You turned your back on them and walked toward the whiteboard you kept on the other side of the room. That morning, you had given Marcie a quick run-down of the enzyme pathways you studied, and you had left your scribbles up for the tour group to marvel at. If anything, it made you look dignified and left Hojo seething at your competence— even if, on the inside, you felt like a bumbling child, unfit to lead your own team.

When the crowd finally reached you, Lazard bowed. He greeted you with, “Professor. Always a pleasure.”

Unlike Hojo, Lazard treated you well. You two were far from sitting together in the company cafeteria together, but he was pleasant enough to you. You smiled politely and lifted a hand in greeting. “Sir.”

Hojo straightened his glasses and turned to the crowd. He introduced you with a _Ms.,_ not with your actual title. You stamped down the urge to correct him. _Don’t look angry,_ you said to yourself. _Not in front of an audience._

You picked up a marker and twirled it in your hands. The one time you had bothered to correct Hojo on your title, he had written you up for an “attitude problem,” and you had to waste an entire afternoon on mandatory leadership courses. You didn’t earn a doctorate by being a slow learner.

The crowd turned to you expectantly, and you realized you had been standing there in silence. Hojo smirked over Lazard’s shoulder.

Lazard gestured at you. “Please, Professor. The floor is yours.”

No one had briefed you on whether or not this was a general audience, and so you would have to guess. You swept your arm across the board. “My team studies the influence of mako on cell growth and repair.” Uncapping the marker, you drew a blue circle around a blob labeled _MAT-beta._ “We have successfully demonstrated that regular treatment with mako—“

“Weekly,” said Hojo. A few heads swiveled to look at him.

You gave him a strained smile. “ _Weekly_ treatment with mako enhances the ability of the cell to resist oxidative stress. Our previous work has indicated,” and here you drew an arrow between _MAT-beta_ and a rectangle labeled _redoxin-1,_ “that SOLDIERs introduced to mako experience upregulation of _redoxin-1_ transcription, along with several other genes responsible for handling stress.” You drew several more arrows, all of them shooting off in different directions. “We believe the _MAT-beta_ protein receptor binds mako in the liver and brings it into the cell, triggering a signaling cascade that—“

Hojo said your name sweetly. You stuttered and looked up from the board.

He smirked. “I believe that’s sufficient. Thank you very much for your time.” He turned to the crowd and gestured. “Now, if you’ll follow me…”

You were left clutching the marker as Hojo herded the crowd to a different corner of the lab. Lazard gave you an apologetic look before striding off.

“This is a joke,” you muttered, slowly capping the marker. In previous years, you would’ve hid in a bathroom stall and cried; now, you just let the humiliation wash over you like a wave. How many times had you seen glazed eyes, bored expressions, blank looks on the faces of others? One of your doctoral committee members had regularly fallen asleep during your presentations. Your family sure as hell didn’t understand you when you tried to give them the NDA-friendly rundown over the phone. You couldn’t remember the last time you had been able to talk freely about your work; even during your interview, Hojo had interrupted you multiple times to rush you to the next question.

You looked down at your shoes. A drop of coffee from the elevator incident stained the toe.

_Stupid,_ you thought. _Annoying._

Hammond, one of your other assistants, looked up from his agar plates with a shrug. “I thought it was good, Professor.” Others nearby murmured their agreement.

You nodded and set the marker down on the ledge. Now you _really_ wanted to run to that bathroom stall to cry. “Thanks, Hammond, but you don’t need to do that.”

Marcie piped up from her place besides Hammond. “We all really like you,” she chirped. “I’ll never turn down an opportunity to hear you speak.”

Hammond nudged her. “Suck-up,” he hissed. Marcie rolled her eyes at him.

You watched the crowd linger around a mako tank. Hojo was gesturing animatedly, clearly excited about what was inside.

“That’s nice of you, Marcie,” you said. “Thanks again.”

* * *

On the way home, you stopped and stared at the poster again. It irritated you more now, but you still couldn’t place why. You leaned back against the opposite building and stared up at it.

Yes, that was Genesis and Angeal; their depictions seemed accurate enough. But something was still wrong. You squinted at Sephiroth’s heroic face for several minutes.

An icy wind blew by. You shivered and turned away.

* * *

A long time ago, you loved being held.

Your family snuggled you close as a baby, took dozens of photos and home movies, showered kisses on your face. You were shoved into expensive dresses for photoshoots, where you were cooed over and rearranged like a doll.

As you aged, they stopped touching you.

You went through puberty, grew hips and breasts. Your family didn’t hold you anymore. The comments came as slow as poison gas under a door: _Why are you wearing that? Your tits are hanging out. That’s_ far _too short. How dare you? Go change._ You spent adolescence in confusion: this was what you always wore, wasn’t it? What switch had flipped? Why was it wrong of you to exist now? You became angry. You couldn’t wear anything tight without being mocked. Your own relatives told you you’d be prettier if you just worked out, if you just learned how to use makeup, if you didn’t expose your body in ways you couldn’t seem to help.

_Men can’t help themselves,_ they warned.

At school, you seemed to have the opposite effect. You were shunned by your peers. You spent school dances in the bathroom, ear pressed to the stall, waiting for the slow-dance to be over so you didn’t have to be the only one without a partner. One boy figured out you had a crush on him, and he had been relentlessly mocked for months.

Time went by. The teasing stopped, replaced by a stony silence. Your friends went on dates, had first kisses, first times. Your family enrolled you in special defense classes and put you on birth control— _just in case,_ they said. You went to prom with a friend: someone to match a corsage with.

You remembered the first day you had worn a low-cut top: it was senior year, and you had caught a mob of boys staring at your chest. You had felt proud then, excited to finally have some positive attention on you.

Then, at a party, someone laid you down on a couch in front of everyone, and the entire world shifted on its axis.

You hadn’t understood what was going on. His hands were cold on your chest. His mouth tasted like spit, his tongue heavy in your mouth. You remembered the song playing on the radio in the background, how you had recited the lyrics in your head. When you think back on it now, you see yourself from a distance, in the crowd of people, watching yourself watch him. He told everyone at school the next day that you didn’t know what you were doing. It had been your first kiss.

You wish you had burned that low-cut top after that.

Later, your first boyfriend held you down on your dorm bed. You had screamed bloody murder, and that only seemed to annoy him.

Later, a girlfriend told you exactly what she wanted from you— no, _needed._ You had swallowed your pride and obeyed her.

Later—

Somewhere, it all becomes a blur. You can pick out small events: a coworker whispering in your ear about where he’d like to fuck, someone sending you threats at one in the morning because you had called him a "friend," a one-night stand scoffing that your orgasm wasn’t “necessary,” a boyfriend telling you from the other side of the bed that you needed to lose weight. There were pleasant moments, too, but even those curdled like milk as the other person grew distant.

You realized your body would sour people on you. Perhaps your family had had a point: no one could look at you and _not_ see a toy to play with and throw away for something better. You would always be left to pick up the pieces no matter what you did. You didn’t recognize the look on people’s faces when they got you in bed: dazed, violent, far-away, as if they would die if you didn’t separate your thighs.

You became a professional crane wife, desperately plucking out your feathers in the dark to reassure your partners that you could be anything they needed you to be. During sex, you shed your body, much like a snake sheds its skin, and thought about safer topics: the weather, what you were going to have for breakfast the next morning. It wasn’t as if you had to remember names: the person above you would be gone within weeks, if not months. _Baby_ sufficed until then.

You began to resent weddings and baby showers. The questions from relatives (the same relatives that had treated your body like a public art exhibition) only got worse: where were the man and the grandchildren and the house? Why weren't you trying harder to find them? _Your biological clock,_ they tutted, _it’s so much easier to have babies when you’re young. You’re a scientist. You understand._

At night, you curled up in the dark and imagined partners that loved you. Over time, those fantasies soured, too, because you couldn’t imagine an ending to the story that didn’t involve breaking you open. You wept to your therapist that you didn’t understand how to have sex like normal people did, that you didn’t understand the language of touch. Your choice of partners varied wildly, united only by a single category: “Whoever wanted you.”

And every time--

You kept plucking your feathers until they stopped growing. You told yourself you looked better without them, anyway.

* * *

It was soothing, being in the lab alone. Other scientists in Hojo’s department ragged on you for working by yourself, and it was _technically_ against Health and Safety’s wishes to stay in the lab alone after hours, but you begged off with the excuse that your cell samples needed feeding at odd hours. After all, you argued, would Shinra rather see your cells die?

The fume hood rattled and groaned noisily. You sprayed your gloves with isopropyl alcohol to sanitize them. The second you stuck your hands under the clear glass window to touch your cell containers, you were in a sterile environment, and you couldn’t risk any contamination. The liquid media you usually suspended them in waited in an incubator set to the human body temperature; although SOLDIERs tended to run on the warmer side, you hadn’t seen anything die from keeping them at 37 Celsius. The media was viscous and red, like strawberry soda gone flat in the summer heat.

Here, in the cell culture room in the back of the lab, you felt cocooned, _safe._ You had the option to lock the door if you wanted, but you usually kept it open. Past 7 PM, no one was around, anyway, and you needed a badge with high security clearance to even enter the lab. It was easy to drown your thoughts in the hum of the fume hood and in the music wafting from an old radio near the door.

You uncapped the clear glass plate and siphoned off the old media with a long glass pipette. Liver cells from a SOLDIER dubbed “039” pooled at the corner of the plate. _Precious cargo,_ you thought to yourself. Back in college, your classmates had teased you for personifying the cells on your plate. _Cute,_ you had once cooed at a protozoan writhing under your microscope. Even your Microbiology professor had roasted you for that one.

You unwrapped a fresh glass pipette and added saline to the plate. The liver cells bobbed aimlessly through the clear fluid. You liked to think they were pleased at getting cleaned, the old liquid media and waste melting off of their stressed little bodies.

A door opened and closed somewhere in the lab.

You jolted to attention. “Hello?” you called.

No answer.

Your heart began to race. You set down the glass plate, where 039’s liver cells continued to float. “Someone there?” you called again. The silence was broken only by your fume hood and the warbling radio.

“Fuck,” you muttered to yourself. You removed your arms from the fume hood and stripped off your gloves. There were only so many people who could be in the lab at night, _especially_ after the friendly coworkers with had already gone home. Depending on who it was, you were either completely screwed or in mildly deep trouble.

You dumped your gloves into the waste bucket and spun your chair to face the door. “Hello!” The quiet of the lab was making you uneasy. Surely someone would’ve greeted you at this point? You walked to the radio and shut it off.

One more time: “Hell-ooo!”

And this time, a faint voice from inside the lab greeted you: “Hello?”

You held your breath.

Footsteps, much closer this time. The voice piped up again. “Hello?”

You perked up. “Sephiroth?”

“Professor,”he called over the hum of the instruments. “What are you doing in there?”

“My job,” you called back. “What are _you_ doing?”

Quiet greeted you after that, and you cursed yourself for being rude. “I’m sorry,” you said, more to yourself than to him.

“For what?” His voice had an amused lilt to it. That was right: SOLDIERs had excellent hearing, and Sephiroth was no exception.

“I just— hold on. I’m busy!”

His voice was now around the corner. “May I come in?”

You backed away from the door. Sephiroth appeared in the doorway. He was still in his full uniform, and the combination of his armor and the long coat made you feel like he sucked up all the air in the room. You looked down at the floor, away from him.

“It’s small in here, but I’m just feeding cells,” you said, as if you were a guilty child.

“Feeding them?” Sephiroth sounded even more amused this time. You looked up. He crossed his arms and leaned one shoulder against the doorframe. Under the fluorescent glare of the cell culture room, you could see the bags under his eyes. _That’s right,_ you thought, _he would have just come home this afternoon._

You gestured helplessly towards the fume hood. “I-- you just change the cell media out. It’s really easy.” Before you could stop yourself, you asked, “Do you want to wait here while I do it?”

Sephiroth raised an eyebrow.

You waved your hands. “Shit, I’m sorry. You’re, uh. You’re probably not interested. It’s—“

“No,” he said. He inclined his head towards you. “No one’s ever offered. Yes. I’d love to watch you.”

The absurdity of this situation was clear: _you_ , demonstrating a menial task usually reserved for undergraduates while Shinra’s prized warrior looked on. Your hands were trembling as you pulled on gloves. “They’ve been sitting in— you can, um. Just take any chair.” Sephiroth looked far too big for the other chair in the room, but he pulled it close to you, anyway. _Too_ close. You turned away from him and sprayed alcohol on your gloves.

“What are you doing?”

You rubbed the gloves together, encouraging the alcohol to evaporate. “Cleaning my gloves.” You looked back to 039’s liver cells, still floating in saline. “The cells have to be kept in a sterile environment. Any contamination from the outside will mess them up. I’ve, um, I’ve been growing these for a year now, and I’m just— I’m protective over them.”

“Really?” Sephiroth’s voice had softened. “What are they?”

“They’re liver cells. Here—“

You unwrapped a fresh glass pipette and gingerly touched the tip to the saline. Sephiroth was so close that you could feel his body heat again. He smelled nice— _no,_ if you lost your focus, you’d risk pulling up the cells with the saline. “I just washed them.”

“Liver cells,” he said to himself. “How are they growing?”

You ejected the salt solution into the liquid waste and tossed the pipette into the sharps disposal. “How, like…how are these still alive, or what am I doing to make them grow?”

“Both, I suppose.”

“This is dozens of generations in.” You held the plate up to the light; to the human eye, the cells looked like dirty, beige clumps. “I’ve been splitting them into new groups every so often. Human cells only divide a few times before they die, so you have to take the— the next generation, and grow more daughter cells from those.” God, did you ever stop talking? You retrieved the media from the incubator. “And we just store them in cryogenic storage unless we need them. Negative-one-fifty degrees.” You hesitated and gave Sephiroth an apologetic look. “I’m sorry, I talk a lot—“

He nudged your shoe with his. “I would have said no if I didn’t want you to teach me,” he said. “You’re very hard on yourself, Professor.”

You felt your cheeks warm. You turned your knees away from him, bringing your legs out of his reach. _Just in case._ “I guess,” you said as you unscrewed the cap on the media. “I think this is the longest anyone’s let me talk.”

“I enjoy hearing you,” said Sephiroth, and _that_ made a warm little flame jump up from your belly. You shoved it back down; you weren’t going to entertain that.

“This is what the cells live in,” you said as you unwrapped another glass pipette. “It just has their food and nutrients and stuff.” Gently, ever-so-gently, you pumped media into the plate, mixing the cells into their new home. There was a shake in your hand, and you braced your elbow against the outside of the fume hood.

“They’re fed now?”

“Uh huh. They’ll just do their thing after that.” You capped the plate and wrote the date on the surface, along with the sample number: _039._ The glass pipette went into the sharps disposal.

The chair groaned as Sephiroth leaned back and crossed his arms. “Why now? So late at night?”

You couldn’t bring yourself to look up at him. “Because that’s when they need to be fed.”

“That doesn’t answer my question.”

God, when had this room become so _warm_? You shouldn’t have worn a sweater under your lab coat today. You drummed your hands against the fume hood. Sephiroth was the favorite; any missteps, and it would absolutely make its way back to Lazard and, ultimately, Hojo. He was sitting between you and the door.

You settled on the safest answer you could think of. “Someone started this cell line really late, and it just so happens that every 2-3 days, they need to be either fed or split at 8 PM.”

“Was that ‘someone’ you?”

Your voice was small. “Yes.”

The chair creaked again as Sephiroth leaned forward. “Why?” he said, and he sounded so _gentle_. “You should be home by now.”

You didn’t like that tone.

It meant tenderness. It meant crossing a boundary and taking something that was yours. It meant peeling you open like an orange and dipping probing fingers into the tender fruit there, pulling you apart, eating you alive. You had promised yourself never to hear someone be that tender towards you again: it was a _trap_. You fed your fucking cells at 8 PM to _avoid_ that, and here was Sephiroth, a man you barely knew, in _your lab_ , all concerned about why you worked alone.

You capped the plate and pulled it out from under the fume hood. “I like to be alone,” you said, and your voice was hard and flinty.

Sephiroth didn’t respond as you pushed past him to put the plate in the cell incubator.

As you ripped off your gloves, you said, “Why are _you_ in my lab so late?”

“I saw the light on.” Still so soft, so tender. You couldn’t stop shaking, sparking like a faulty lighter. “I had hoped you were here, but I was concerned—“

“Yes, well. I’m _allowed_ to be here.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No, I—“

And just like that, the fire in you evaporated, replaced by shame.

You rubbed the sleeve of your lab coat against your safety glasses. “It’s okay. You’re allowed to go wherever you want. I must be tired. _I’m_ sorry.”

_Always the first to fold._

Sephiroth stood. His shoulders spanned from the wall to the fume hood. If he wanted to hurt you, it wouldn’t even be a contest. You toyed with the bracelet on your wrist, shoulders hunched.

He took a deep breath and looked up at the ceiling. “I—“

“Do you want to come back another time?” you said softly. “Maybe during the day?” You had always been so eager to please— you couldn’t draw a line in the sand to save your life. At any rate, he sure as fuck wasn’t coming back after you had treated him so poorly. It was pathetic to pretend otherwise.

“Would you like that?”

He didn’t sound upset; in fact, he sounded curious, even hopeful. You tried to look up, got caught at the broad expanse of skin at your eye level, and looked down at the floor again.

Sephiroth continued, “I didn’t mean to intrude. I’ll give you more warning next time.”

You reached behind your glasses and rubbed the heel of your hand against your eye. “I would, um. Sure. Thanks for listening.”

“Thank _you_ for teaching me something new.” He gestured towards the door. “After you.”

You backed away from him, out into the empty expanse of the lab. A knot of nerves was tangled in your belly. Years of therapy had given you the tools to resist fawning over people with power over you, but at that moment, there didn’t seem to be a coping mechanism in the world that could help you.

You scurried over to your bench. “Just, um. Anytime after 5. Or 6, even. I-it clears out. It’s usually just me.” Never mind that being that close to him, without an exit, made your stomach turn into knots. “It’s okay.” It wasn’t. “Really.”

Sephiroth had to duck to get out of the cell culture room. “It’s not distracting you?”

“Nope.” It was. You toyed with your bracelet as you walked towards the door. Sephiroth was a dark shadow on your heels. “It’s okay. Really.” You paused at the door and looked up at him.

Sephiroth looked at you sideways, eyes narrowing. “If you say so.”

You felt a hard lump in your throat.

He left you standing there, alone, as the instruments churned away in the background.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you again for reading! ^w^ A little delay on this one because of work-related stuff.
> 
> **No TW's apply for this chapter.**

It was only a matter of time before someone approached Marcie about the SOLDIER fan clubs. She spent your lunch hour next to your cubicle, busily narrating her observations to a (less-than-enthused) Hammond. You tucked into your sandwich and tried not to look like an eavesdropper. It was challenging, considering your cubicles shared a wall.

“There’s _dozens_ ,” she gasped as she scrolled through her tablet. “I’m not even sure where to begin. Should I just join all of them?”

“Say goodbye to your inbox if you do,” groaned Hammond. “It’s impossible to unsubscribe.”

You _were_ curious. Sure, you passed on joining the clubs when you were hired; shyness had gotten the best of you. You thought joining a fan club for an employee was odd. Even so, you wanted to know what they spoke about. It was as if the SOLDIERs were celebrities on Page Seven of the _Midgar Chronicle_.

Marcie rolled back in her chair to look in on you. “Which ones are you a part of, Professor?”

You stopped mid-chew and looked up at Hammond, who leaned against Marcie’s cubicle. He made a cutting motion at his throat and shook his head. Marcie beamed at you expectantly.

“None of them,” you said around your food.

Marcie's eyebrows shot up. “Seriously? Not even one?”

You looked from Hammond to Marcie and back again. You shook your head slowly.

Hammond pointed at you. “Good. Keep it that way.”

Marcie looked up at Hammond. “I would've thought Silver Elite."

You choked on your sandwich. “The Sephiroth one? What for?”

Hammond leaned back and pursed his lips. “Even I’ve gotta admit, that’s the best one.”

Marcie shoved her tablet at you. “The level of research they do is, like, _insane_. It has to be someone who knows him, like, personally.” She pointed to Hammond. “We have our theories.”

Hammond rubbed his temple with his fingers. “It’s going to be someone random, Marce. Like, the janitor or the guy who does his laundry.

You hesitantly took the tablet from Marcie. While your research assistants bickered between themselves, you looked over the e-mail open on Marcie's screen:

_NO ONE AT HOME?_

_Dear members of the Silver Elite,_

_We hope, as always, that you are staying sane as we transition into winter. Here’s a little something to keep you warm: Our sources have notified us that Sephiroth has his very own apartment near the top of the SOLDIER barracks. These apartments come fully furnished, with their own fully-stocked kitchen and a private bathroom! Despite having floor-to-ceiling windows, they are one-way, allowing Sephiroth his privacy at home. No word on whether or not our king shares his living space with a special someone. What do you think?_

You squinted at the message. So Sephiroth lived alone? That didn’t mean there _wasn't_ a revolving door of partners at his disposal; you wouldn’t doubt it, given how popular he was. No doubt people had to take a number.

_It’s sad, I know._

You swallowed and handed the tablet back to Marcie. “It’s a little, uh…”

“Detailed?” Hammond raised his eyebrows at you.

Marcie clutched the tablet to her chest. “You think so?”

Not like you hadn’t been a part of some fan clubs in your time; you didn’t exactly have room to talk. Once, when you were small, you sent a gushing letter to some minor TV actor you had a crush on. When his autograph came in the mail, you had screamed to high heaven. Your parents waited a few days before informing you that everyone, no matter what they wrote, also received an autograph.

You looked up and saw Hojo approaching your cubicle. You hastily shoved your sandwich back into its bag. “You join whichever one you want, Marcie,” you said. “Don’t let Hammond peer-pressure you into anything.”

Marcie turned to Hammond with a triumphant _See?!_ just as Hojo reached your desks.

“Doctor,” he said. “I see you’re socializing. I assume you're ready for this afternoon’s meeting?”

You stood and dusted off your pants. “One, right?” It was 12:45; just like Hojo to make sure you never got a moment’s rest. Whoever invented afternoon meetings must not have had friends.

Hojo grinned. You could see your reflection off of his glasses. “It never hurts to be punctual. Would you like to go together?”

The thought of being alone with Hojo, even in a glass elevator, was terrifying. Even Marcie and Hammond had shut up. When you turned to them for support, Hammond was already slinking back to his desk, and Marcie had become _very_ interested in her inbox.

“Can you give me a minute?” you lied. “Just, uh, going to get a fresh coffee beforehand.”

“All of that caffeine can’t be good for you,” he sing-songed. He turned away and waved a hand. “A little friendly advice from someone who’s been around the block a few times.”

You exhaled as Hojo moved out of earshot. Marcie peeked at you from above the shared cubicle wall.

“Is he always like that?” she whispered.

Your shoulders sagged. Marcie would learn, eventually. “He is."

* * *

This particular meeting was department-wide, meaning it corralled Lazard, Hojo, and all of the high-level research staff under Hojo's control. Research assistants were barred from such a high-level meeting. You usually left your laptop behind in favor of a simple notebook so you wouldn't nod off, but it was still hard to stay awake. Many of the topics presented were outside of your project— hell, outside of your interest, if you were honest, but appearances mattered. It wouldn't look good to surf the web.

You crammed yourself into the back of the elevator. A few months ago, Hammond had gotten you a mug that said “WORLD’S OKAYEST BIOCHEMIST,” and you two joked that you should’ve fired him for it. Nevertheless, the gift touched you, and it became a crutch you happily leaned on when you had to perform. The black coffee inside sloshed around as the elevator climbed to the 67th floor.

Instead of room numbers, some executive had had the bright idea to name the 67th floor conference rooms after planets and stars. You _still_ struggled to find the proper room, even after months of attending meetings. Hojo had chosen _Betelgeuse,_ a cavernous room with only a handful of chairs around a long conference table. Judging by the babble inside, it was already full. God forbid you had to stand.

You shouldered the door open. Lazard and Hojo were beside each other, already deep in conversation. Another scientist, a great big bear of a man named Yun, fiddled with the projector. You and Yun usually sat together, but it looked like he had already taken the seat next to Hojo. There were a handful of SOLDIERs here, too: high-ranking ones, some Second Classes you didn’t recognize. Sully sat opposite Yun, snapping her gum and talking a mile a minute at Lukas, a chemist who specialized in the numerous organic compounds found in mako. If Sully was in this meeting, it was likely about sample collection and the limits of their experiments.

But sitting alone in one corner of the table, near the back wall, was Sephiroth. You hesitated in the doorway. It was as if everyone had shrunk away from him, leaving the chairs next to him empty. Some scientists and SOLDIERs had even lined up against the back wall, leaving the two chairs beside him empty. He didn’t seem to mind as he typed furiously on his tablet, leaning back in his chair.

You couldn’t recall if you’d seen him these meetings. Perhaps it was something to do with what they were about to discuss; perhaps this was the only time he hadn’t been on a mission.

You chewed on your bottom lip and scanned the room. _Yes,_ you could sit on Lazard's left: it was probably the most strategic move, as you could show how dedicated you were to even the driest of topics. But sitting next to Lazard meant you had to be alert during the entire meeting; no wonder no one had taken that seat. You kept looking: there was a free spot next to Lukas. They were friendly enough, but if Sully got them going on cricket, you’d be in this meeting for the next five hours while they duked it out with Hojo. You didn’t want to be anywhere near this conference room when that happened. The rest of the room was already packed, and judging by the time, you weren't going to be the last one in the room. You certainly didn't want to stand.

You looked back to Sephiroth. He flicked his hair out of his face and studied whatever was on his tablet screen.

You steeled yourself.

You scurried over to the chair against the back wall. You set your coffee down first, followed by your notebook. You withdrew your pen and set that next to the notebook, too.

When you sat down in the chair beside Sephiroth, the conversation in the room died. You looked up; everyone, save for Sephiroth, was staring at you. Hojo crossed his arms and raised an eyebrow. A rock formed in the pit of your stomach, but you willed yourself to stay there. Evidently, you had broken some rule.

After a lull, Sephiroth looked up. He followed everyone’s gaze to you. The corner of his mouth twitched.

You cleared your throat and addressed the room. “Is this seat taken?”

Lazard was the first to break the silence. He shook his head. “No, Professor. Looks like it’s yours now.”

The smile on Sephiroth’s face widened, ever-so-slightly. When you looked up at him to meet his eyes, he turned back to his tablet. Everyone returned to their conversations.

Your shoulders slumped in relief. Out of the corner of your eye, you watched Sephiroth carefully, but he rested his cheek on his fist, hiding his expression from you.

More stragglers entered the room after that: lab managers, animal technicians, one or two other scientists. They took the remaining seats you had rejected, but the seat to Sephiroth’s left remained empty, even as people leaned against the walls. You resisted the urge to address Sephiroth; after all, you didn’t want to bother him, and he seemed focused on something. You settled instead for reviewing your notes.

Hojo clapped twice, and the room settled. “As we all know, it’s Professor Yun’s turn to present this quarter. Afterwards, Director Lazard and I will be requesting updates from team leaders on their progress.” He turned to Yun and nodded. “Please, Doctor.”

Sully rushed over to the lights and dimmed them. You took a generous swig of coffee.

Yun’s work oversaw the medical side of SOLDIER: designing meal plans, tabulating performance in the field, organizing clinical trials. This was a presentation you could afford to tune out; your work was closely inter-related, and you didn’t need as many of the relevant medical terms and background explained to you. Nevertheless, you took basic notes throughout Yun’s introduction, if only to stay focused; at least he was a talented researcher, and an engaging presenter to boot. Maybe he had feedback on the mako feeding experiments you had asked him for.

Yun was in the middle of describing the gallbladder when you felt something nudge your foot.

You glanced at Sephiroth. He was turned away from you, hand to his mouth as he watched Yun’s presentation.

Something nudged your foot again.

You felt heat creeping up your neck. You looked down at your notes, where you had paused in drawing a diagram of mako’s route through the liver.

Sephiroth was _nudging_ your foot, like a bored undergrad in a lecture.

You swallowed hard, staring at the unfinished gallbladder on the notebook page. No one was looking in your direction, and the back wall was empty. Even so, you were fairly sure your cheeks glowed like neon in the dim lighting.

Tentatively, you reached out your left foot. You feebly nudged him back.

Even under his hand, you saw Sephiroth smile.

You ducked your head, feeling both mortified and fuzzy for reasons you didn’t understand. He didn’t touch you again as Yun moved on to reviewing old results from past presentations. You finished your diagram, refusing to look up at Sephiroth as you worked. You weren't some kid anymore; this was your _work_ , and you wouldn't let him distract you again.

Your phone buzzed in your back pocket. You made it a point not to bring your electronics into meetings, but the cell phone was a necessary evil. You kept it on you just in case something went south in the lab, but you normally silenced it during meetings.

You slid a hand into your pocket. You didn’t need any more distractions.

You woke it up under the table, about to hit the “Silence” button, when you saw the message on the Home screen. It was from an unknown number, but it had been sent via Shinra’s instant messaging system. It had to be from someone in the company.

_> > You’re better than okay. You should give yourself more credit._

You narrowed your eyes. You scanned the table, but everyone was paying fast attention to Yun’s presentation.

You looked back down at the message and opened the reply box.

_> > Sorry, but who is this??_

Sephiroth’s tablet screen lit up.

You blanched.

Without looking away from the projector screen, he swept his tablet under the table. You watched in horror as he opened up a message box and began typing, looking for all the world like he was simply taking notes on Yun’s work.

Your phone lit up. You looked down at the new message.

_> > I apologize. This is Sephiroth. I should have been more specific._

You looked away and rubbed your eyes. Sephiroth leaned back in his chair, tablet still in his hands. You typed out a quick reply.

>> _It was a gift from an RA._

Sephiroth was quick to reply:

_> > Even so, they couldn’t get you something more flattering?_

You leaned forward and scribbled a quick note to yourself about Yun’s current slide. You returned to your phone:

_> > Come on. It’s a joke. Do they let you make those in soldier?_

Shinra's autocorrect kicked in, correcting "soldier" to “SOLDIER” before it sent your reply.

When Sephiroth looked down at his screen, his expression was unreadable. Yun switched to a figure he was planning on putting in his next paper.

Your phone lit up under the table.

_> > Ha. But really, you are a dedicated researcher. Perhaps “world’s best” is more suitable._

You scoffed.

Heads swiveled to you. A chill went through you.

Yun piped up from the front of the room. “Did you have a question, Professor?”

You pocketed your phone and waved your hands. Not _Yun,_ of all people; that man was smarter than you, and nice to boot. “Oh, no, Yun, I’m sorry. Just had something in my throat! It’s okay!”

Yun nodded in reply, a relieved smile on his face. Everyone turned back to the front of the room, but Hojo’s gaze lingered on you.

As you returned Hojo's gaze, his lip curled. He resettled in his chair and turned back to the projection screen.

Sephiroth gently nudged your foot. An apology, you realized, for distracting you. Very slowly, you pulled out your phone and opened the instant message window.

_> > You’re making me look bad. :(_

_> > I apologize. It won’t happen again. _

You read the reply over and over. Sephiroth could have easily thrown you under the bus, or simply not bothered to apologize; any other employee would have done the same, especially after the look Hojo gave you. It wouldn't be right to scold Sephiroth for trying to cheer you up.

You typed out a single reply:

_> > It’s fine!!! Really. Don't worry about it._

You pocketed your phone. When it buzzed again, you ignored it.

* * *

You opened the lid to the cryogenic storage tank. Billows of nitrogen smoke pooled around you, licking at your exposed ankles. Here, cell culture lines were stored within metal racks, which slotted like drawers into a metal cylinder running the length of the storage tank. A steady feed of liquid nitrogen maintained the cultures at -150 degrees: cold enough to keep the cells sleeping in glycerol solution until they were needed again, and certainly cold enough to give you frostbite. Heavy, padded welder's gloves were needed to handle anything inside. You brushed the snow off of your personal metal shelf, where your cell cultures sat frozen in hard lumps at the bottom of tubes.

You paged through your samples for specimen 029. Their liver cells, predictably, hadn't survived the high dose of mako you had subjected them to, and it was time to culture another line. You placed the tube of cells into an ice bucket off to the side and moved to re-shelve your samples.

One of the shelves below yours was partially open. From what little you could see, the caps were purple, rather than clear. You hesitated.

You had only seen purple-capped tubes in the dusty recesses of old cabinets. Clearly, Shinra had stopped buying this brand years ago. These had to be _extremely_ old; it was doubtful that the cell lines within were viable. At any rate, it was a sin to throw out someone else's work, even if it was too old to use.

But you had organized this storage cylinder with several other scientists just a week ago. Why had you never seen this sample set before?

You reshelved your samples. You hooked one finger around the mystery drawer's pull and, with one mighty yank, dragged the rack out into view. Chunks of ice fell to the bottom of the storage tank.

Rows and rows of the same purple-capped tubes greeted you. There weren’t any labels or marking on their caps, and a heavy layer of snow and ice fused them to the rack. You gently wiggled a single tube out and brushed the snow off of its side.

In hastily-scribbled pen was a sample ID:

_J - 180 - L - 9177_

You squinted. That was Hojo’s handwriting. From what you knew, Hojo didn’t use the cell culture room here; he instead preferred the higher-clearance labs, away from the rank and file of his subordinates. Why were his old samples moved here?

What _were_ these?

You lifted the tube to your eye level. The clump of cells within was a sickly gray, so unlike the human cell cultures in the racks surrounding it. You narrowed your eyes. Whatever these were, they certainly weren’t alive anymore.

But Hojo was as protective over his work as you were with yours. You wouldn’t hear the end of it if you disposed of his samples. You needed hard evidence before you presented your case to Hojo: if you could prove the cells were no longer viable, you could argue that they needed to be thrown out. The easiest way to test viability was to plate them and watch them grow.

You placed _J - 180 - L - 9177_ in your ice bucket. First things first: 029 had to be plated. If the cells thawed completely, it could compromise their integrity, and you would have to gather fresh samples from specimen 029. It was work-- and money-- that didn't need to be wasted because you had gotten curious.

You closed the storage tank. The nitrogen valve beside it hissed angrily as it pumped liquid nitrogen into the tank, cooling the inside back to -150 degrees. You removed the heavy gloves and set them atop the tank.

In the fume hood, you filled two Petri dishes with warm liquid media. After that, a scrape of 029 went into the first dish; _J - 180 - L - 9177_ went into the second. You gently tipped each plate back and forth, allowing the sleeping cells to spread evenly across the surface.

You picked up your marker to label the plates. _J - 180 - L - 9177:_ if these were Hojo’s samples, _and_ if he was using this cell culture room, he would surely recognize his own sample name. But if you didn’t label these plates properly, it would be impossible to tell which was which, even if _J - 180 - L - 9177_ failed to grow like you expected. Hojo could just as easily argue that you mishandled 029’s cells, and then you would get punished for touching his work without permission. Worse yet, you could waste precious resources assuming 029's cells weren't viable.

You finally labeled the plate _029-1._ Even to Hojo, this would appear as if you modified 029’s cell culture, as was normal for your work. Hopefully, he wouldn’t suspect a thing.

* * *

There were no kindnesses for you; there were only traps and bait. You had always been easy prey.

You wrapped your hands around the neck of the snake and guided its fangs to your throat.

* * *

Snow came down in heavy droves when you left Shinra HQ. The mako reactors reflected off of the dark sky, bathing the city in green. Sometime during the day, workers had installed lights on the giant Shinra ad near your apartment. You stopped in front of it, peered up at it with narrowed eyes.

_Always looking out for you and your family,_ said the poster.

There was hardly anyone around at this time of night. You shivered and kicked the slush around your dress shoes. It was time to break out your winter boots, you thought. You checked your phone for the time.

The unread message from Sephiroth still blinked on your Home screen:

>> _You can tell me if it isn't fine, and I do worry about it._

You scowled and shoved your phone back into your pocket. 

When you looked up at the poster again, the mistake hit you all at once. Your lips parted.

The poster artist had given Sephiroth blue eyes with round pupils.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, thanks for reading! A gentle reminder that if you're interested in a gender-neutral version of this story, I'm happy to rig one up for you guys.
> 
> More pseudoscience here, shhh it's okay shhh
> 
> **TW's for this chapter: Discussion about cancer biology at the end of the second scene.**

_A MYSTERIOUS INTERLOPER?_

_Dear members of the Silver Elite,_

_The holiday season is upon us, and in the spirit of the season, we bring you yet another exclusive: Sephiroth has been spotted with a mysterious woman at a recent board meeting. Our beloved warrior usually sits alone, but recently, an unnamed employee sat next to him instead! Our source tells us that Sephiroth didn’t seem to mind. Could this be the beginning of love for Shinra’s top SOLDIER? We will keep you posted!_

You put your tablet down in your lap and looked up at Hammond. “Why?”

“Who _was_ it, though?” He clenched his hands into fists and growled in frustration. “It’s so vague! Who goes to these board meetings, anyway?"

The two of you waited for a protein binding experiment to finish. Lukas had isolated an aromatic compound from mako and passed it on to your lab. It resembled a sugar, so you set Hammond to performing a protein pull-down assay. If the liver could process the mystery compound as an energy source, you’d see metabolic proteins bind to it. Anything bound would be purified later, but for now, a pull-down meant watching and waiting. You brought your laptop into the lab to look over data in the meantime.

You kicked around the tile with your winter boots. “I mean, _I_ was at a meeting—“

Hammond whipped around in his chair. “With _Sephiroth_? What was he like?”

You leaned away from Hammond and winced. Somehow, it struck you as a bad idea to let on that _you_ were the woman in question. “Hammond, the wash buffer?”

Hammond turned back to the experiment. Lukas’s mysterious compound had been bound to molecular beads within a glass column; metabolic proteins would stick to the beads, and the compound would, hopefully, bind the proteins, too. Hammond had mechanical pump. 

The distraction was only temporary: as the pump forced the wash buffer into the column, he turned back to you. “But no, seriously, what was he like?”

You stared at your laptop screen. The data swam before your eyes; you squeezed them shut. “ _Normal,_ dude. Really, really ordinary.”

“He didn’t say anything to you?”

“No, nothing. Why would he?”

Never mind that you had read and re-read your text chain together that night.

Hammond sagged in his chair. “Oh, come _on._ Did you see who was sitting next to him, then?”

You idly clicked around your spreadsheet, selecting nothing in particular. Your mind raced for an explanation.

You settled for a deflection instead. “It’s a gossip rag, Hammond. I didn’t see anything weird. Besides, the room was full when I got there. People were standing.”

He was close to a rebuttal when you heard quick, pattering footsteps behind you. He jerked his chin towards the source, and you turned to find Marcie looking stricken.

“Do you remember that cell lysate?” she panted, out of breath from running. “You know, the one you made last week?”

You looked at her sideways. “327’s lysate, yeah. Why?”

“It’s gone.” She crossed her arms around herself. “I’ve looked _everywhere,_ and I can’t find it. Did you guys move it?”

You exchanged glances with Hammond. “No? What do you mean, it’s gone? Did you check the minus-twenty?”

Marcie shook her head. “Not in there, either.”

You closed your laptop. “Give me a second.” You turned to Hammond and pointed at the column. “Let that sit in the extraction buffer for a few minutes, okay? See if it helps your yield this time.”

Marcie led you to the refrigerators and freezers in the back of the lab. A few other technicians waited in line for the chance to dig around their shelves.

“I’m sorry,” Marcie squeaked.

“It’s totally fine,” you replied, trying your best to sound soothing. “It’s probably just pushed behind something. Happens all the time.”

She hopped from foot to foot as the line moved forward. “I don’t think it is, and…” She cringed. “We’re gonna have to make it again, right?”

“I mean, worst case scenario.” The last technician fetched their samples and moved aside. You crouched to the lowest shelf in the -20-degree freezer and retrieved a sample box. You always kept your cell lysates in the same place: separated from your genetic samples, so anyone could find and replicate your work. It was precisely this sort of labeling system that kept situations like this from happening. Marcie seemed ready to pop out of her skin with nerves.

When you removed the box lid, you raised your eyebrows. Specimen 327 was, indeed, gone. In its place was a neat, empty row.

You looked up at Marcie. “You weren’t kidding.”

She fussed with her lab coat. “I didn’t use it. I checked yesterday to see if they were there, so I could get started quickly today, and they were right where you said they’d be. And now they're not!"

You capped the box and pulled out another box. “MAT Team’s RNA” said the box in your handwriting. The inside was packed with your RNA samples: just as expected.

You muttered, “Hammond shouldn’t be using 327’s lysate today.” You placed your boxes back where you found them. “This is weird.”

“Did you loan them out to anyone else, Professor?”

“No, that’s why it’s weird.” You sighed and rose to your feet. The freezer door closed with a dull _thump_. “I think someone took it. I’ll send an e-mail out.” You turned to Marcie and waved a hand. “Don’t worry about the lysate for right now. Can you just extract the rest of the DNA today instead? And sequence it, like we talked about."

Your research assistant slouched. “Okay. Are you sure it’s all right, Professor?”

“I mean, we can’t do anything until we figure this out. This doesn’t usually happen.” You added, “It’s not your fault, Marcie. Thanks for telling me.”

Marcie rushed off. You eyed the freezer. First the old cell samples from the night before, and now _your_ samples were disappearing. Could it be Hojo getting his revenge for his stolen samples? But no, your failure would ultimately make him look bad. The one thing Hojo couldn't tolerate was looking bad. Maybe you were being paranoid.

The missing samples nagged at the back of your brain as you returned to your laptop. Beside you, Hammond was watching a five-minute timer with razor focus. You opened Shinra's messaging app and navigated to the lab group-chat.

_> > Missing 327’s lysate as of this AM. Anyone??_

The replies came quickly:

_> > not us!_

_> > Haven’t needed lysate in a while_

_> > It wasn’t your RAs???_

You replied:

_> > Already asked. No dice_

Finally, Hojo’s icon appeared. Upon Hojo’s arrival, the chat went silent.

_> > Upstairs needed a control. It’s with us._

You rolled your eyes to the ceiling. Of _course._

>> _No worries boss. We’ll recalibrate today._

What you really wanted to say was, _Fuck off, stop touching my shit without permission,_ but you hardly had room to talk: your stolen contraband was steps away in an incubator. Maybe this _was_ revenge, after all.

* * *

You busied yourself with organizing and re-organizing your data until you saw the last scientist put their coat on.

The 60th floor lobby was empty. Silent advertisements played on large screens, turning the lobby a white-blue. You walked to the lab and peeked in the windows: the lab was dead. _Perfect._

Instruments churned away as you locked the lab doors behind you. If anyone decided to follow you, you would hear the lock disengage. You managed a cursory glance towards the lab windows: the lobby beyond was still deserted.

You flicked on the fluorescent lights of the cell culture room. You set the ancient radio to some pop station, kept the volume just low enough for you to hear the rest of the lab. After putting on your nitrile gloves and sanitizing them with alcohol, you opened the incubator to retrieve your cells.

029 appeared to be growing, but so, too, did “029-1:” the _J - 180 - L - 917_ cells in disguise.

You placed them inside the fume hood.It wasn’t hard to check cell growth with the naked eye: the bottom of the plate turned cloudy with growth. Even so, _J - 180 - L - 917_ looked sluggish; it seemed too early to feed them or split them into new generations, but the plate seemed more populated than before.

So Hojo’s old cells were still viable, after all. That made you a thief.

Curiosity nagged at the back of your neck, like an insistent child.

You pulled _J - 180 - L - 917_ out of the fume hood and brought it over to the microscope. You placed its dust cover delicately atop the radio, muffling it. You swapped between foci, turning dials until the cells came into sharp focus.

At first glance, nothing seemed especially wrong with the cells: most had the blocky, translucent appearance of human liver cells. Usually, the microscope was for confluent cells: healthy specimens that multiplied to fill the dish, cramming their membranes against each other. _J - 180 - L - 917_ was nowhere near that state, as you expected. The cells clung to the bottom of the plate in irregular clumps only a few cells wide.

They had a sickly gray cast to them still, or was that your eye?

You switched to a higher magnification and gasped.

Some of the cells had sprouted multiple nuclei: two or three small dots, clumped at random within the cell body. Still others had taken on long, splattered shapes, as if someone had dropped the cell from the roof. They appeared to be reaching out towards their neighbors. A few were as long and probing as a muscle cell.

The last time you had seen cells behave this way had been in a cancer biology class. Your professor had shown you images of uterine cancer cells: grasping things with several nuclei, growing all wrong, choking the patient from the inside out.

* * *

You jiggled your foot as you sat on the clinic bench. You couldn’t stop thinking about the _J - 180 - L - 917_ cells you had looked at last night: why would Hojo be culturing cancer cells, and why were they behaving so oddly? Maybe it had something to do with why he had taken cell lysate from your team.

This morning, the lysate had reappeared in your sample box: all five tubes sitting in their designated row, albeit much emptier. Marcie had obviously been relieved when you gave her the go-ahead to continue her work. Nevertheless, the levels had been so low that you knew you’d have to make the lysate all over again: a delicate process in which you opened the cell membrane and harvested the cell's contents without changing a single protein or molecule. You sighed, a bone-deep weariness making its home in your gut. It was the last thing you wanted to focus on.

The door to the clinic opened, and Sully flounced in. “Hiya, Professor."

The person who followed was someone you instantly recognized: one of Sephiroth’s First-Class companions from the poster, looking stern as he followed Sully in.

She waved a hand at him. “You can wait right here. Just need to get set up.”

He crossed his arms and nodded at you in acknowledgement before turning back to Sully, now fishing around for her keys. “No trouble at all.”

You made to stand, but the SOLDIER waved a hand at you. “It’s alright,” he said. “I’ll stand.”

You obediently plopped back down on the bench as Sully disappeared into the exam room. “Professor Hollander was feeling generous this week,” you said. “I didn’t think he’d agree to the specimen request."

The SOLDIER shrugged. “I think he prefers it if someone else asks.” A slight smile twitched at the edge of his lips. “Had it been Hojo, it would have been war.”

You smiled and looked down at your shoes. So the dislike of Hojo spanned departments and teams, then. You felt a little justified for stealing his cells.

You looked up at the man, who now studied the billboard of announcements in the clinic. A white flyer cheerfully advertised yearly flu vaccinations.

“You must be Angeal,” you said, and you introduced yourself.

Angeal raised his eyebrows and turned back to you. “So you’re the scientist I’ve heard so much about. It’s a pleasure.”

You looked away. What did that mean? You shifted on the bench. “Good things, right?”

“ _Only_ good things.” Angeal took a step forward, but otherwise kept his distance. He put one hand on his hip and rolled his shoulders. “It’s an honor to give blood to Hojo's most talented scientist."

There was a teasing tone in his voice. You shook your head, a nervous laugh escaping you. “I— there’s probably been some mistake?"

“Your name is fairly distinctive,” Angeal replied. “I think there’s only one of you.”

“Sure, but—“

Sully stuck her head out of the exam room. “Come on, you. Before I change my mind and send you back to Hollander.” There was no offer here, you noticed, to follow him: not like there had been with Sephiroth.

Angeal raised a hand towards you as he followed Sully into the exam room. “Take care, Professor.”

The door to the exam room swung shut, and the clinic fell silent. You were frozen to the bench in mortification. 

If the source of Angeal’s information was who you thought it was, then this had to stop. Immediately.

You had half a mind to rip off your gloves and message Sephiroth: _Stop telling lies about me,_ or, _Leave me alone,_ or, _Fuck off_. Something definitive, a strong message that would tell the man that you two were not at all familiar. Whatever you sent had to draw a line: you were nothing compared to him, and there was no reason at all why he should take any interest in you.

You _thunked_ the back of your head against the clinic wall. Only one thing came out of a man's flattery. Your survival had depended on that knowledge, time and again, and you would not-- could not-- fail that test again.

But if you told off _the_ Sephiroth, well…the walls had ears, and you didn’t need more of Hojo's wrath.

You tried to calm yourself by thinking about your cells. 029 was due for feeding tomorrow; it was also time for its first exposure to mako. You needed to go easier with the treatments this time. While it was worthwhile to consider the boundaries of what you could and could not do to cells, you couldn’t kill off everything you cultured just to test endpoints.

The door to the exam room swung open. Sully deposited a handful of blood tubes into your ice bucket, all labeled _601._

“He’s gonna need a minute,” she whispered. “He always goes under during draws.”

* * *

_YOU ARE INVITED!!!_

_The 35_ _ th _ _annual_

_SHINRA RESEARCH DIVISION_

_HOLIDAY PARTY_

_December 13_ _ th _ _at 7 PM_

_Refreshments will be served!!!!_

_Please RSVP if bringing a guest :o)_

You chewed your bottom lip, kicking your legs off the side of your bed. The e-mail had a garish gold background; tiny ornaments flashed along the edges. Clearly, some intern had spent a long afternoon on this.

You scrolled up to the “recipients” list. Your TV warbled on in the background; the steam heater hissed and clanked, still unable to warm your apartment above freezing.

The recipient list was long: Hojo was there, as were Yun, Lukas, and Lazard. There were a slew of other scientists from different departments, as well as a few engineers from transport and energy. Did everyone usually go to these performative parties? Networking events made your skin crawl, as did watching coworkers get drunk. You didn’t need another night of coworkers begging you to dance, and the free food wasn’t enough of a lure. Maybe you could beg off?

Your breath hitched as Sephiroth’s e-mail address appeared in the list. You hadn’t seen him around Shinra HQ since the meeting.

As if you were being watched, you closed the message in shame and looked away, towards your frost-encrusted window. You clutched the phone to your chest.

Sephiroth didn’t seem like the type for social events, and if that meeting was any indication, people tended to steer clear of him unless he could do something for them. You knew that feeling all too well: alone strictly until needed.

The pang of hurt that went through you was familiar, and you realized that you had felt it before: for yourself.

You raised your phone and opened the Shinra messaging app. There were a few messages on the research group chat, as well as Hammond sending some cat video to you and Marcie. Hojo's window was blue with an unread message, asking when you’d present results from the protein pull-down.

You kept scrolling until you reached Sephiroth’s window. You stared at the last message he had sent you:

_> >You can tell me if it isn't fine, and I do worry about it._

Next to it was a tiny note: _Message read at 8:39 PM._

You groaned and stared at the ceiling. After a deep breath, you opened the reply window:

_> >Why did you tell An_|

You cleared the message. You knew, deep down, that you didn’t want to know why Sephiroth spoke about you so fondly. The likely answer made your stomach churn.

You typed something different:

_> >Hey, do we have to go to that holiday party?_

_Message sent!_

The ellipsis bubble blinked into existence. You raised an eyebrow.

Sephiroth’s reply came within minutes:

_> >No one has to do anything, but you may hear about “teamwork” for weeks if you don’t._

You found yourself smiling. A warm feeling bloomed in your chest.

_> >Mandatory fun?_

Sephiroth’s reply came as soon as the first:

_> >Shinra's specialty. Will you be there?_

And just like that, the warm feeling evaporated and left behind dread. You looked out of your window again. From here, you could see the traffic. For several minutes, you stared at the intersection below, at the tiny Shinra-corp. cars darting back and forth.

You turned back to your phone.

_> >Will you be?_

The ellipsis bubble reappeared. Your phone _plinked_ with a reply:

_> >Best to keep up appearances, no?_

You scowled. Sephiroth was right: you _had_ to make nice, else the research division would shun you.

_> >Ugh. You’re right._

Sephiroth’s reply was instantaneous:

_> >That’s rare._

You typed out:

_> >What’s rare?_

Sephiroth:

_> >Me being right._

You rolled your eyes.

_> >Come on. Everyone worships at your feet._

There was a pause: Sephiroth was hesitating. You saw the ellipsis bubble blink into existence, only to disappear again. You couldn’t stop staring at your phone.

Finally, he replied:

_> >It’s less pleasant than you’d think. There’s always pressure to be right. Lives depend on it._

You sat up in bed.

_> >Why do you think I’m in research? I’d be a crummy surgeon._

Sephiroth’s next reply was much faster:

_> >Ha ha. Once again, you underestimate yourself._

Before you could stop yourself, you replied:

_> >That makes two of us._

Sephiroth didn’t reply after that. The notification next to the message said, unhelpfully, _Read at 9:54 PM._

You stared at your phone for another five minutes, tapping your foot on the floor, but no reply came.

**Author's Note:**

> Twitter: @envysnest

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [The Wildling](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28820610) by [assistedtouch](https://archiveofourown.org/users/assistedtouch/pseuds/assistedtouch)




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